intake manifold gasket - done!

well, i finally finished putting the truck back together after
changing the intake manifold gasket. i have a 1999 Chevy K1500, 80K
miles. no leaks as of yet (i'm hoping at least another 80K before

doing that again). the hardest things were reconnecting the fuel
lines, not at the intake manifold but at the bracket near the
firewall, and putting the distributor back the exact same way it was
taken out. for the fuel lines i ended up having to disconnect them at
the intake manifold and connecting them first at the bracket, then
trying my hardest to pull them to get them lined up to go into the
intake manifold.
i searched alt.trucks.chevy and alt.autos.4x4.chevy-trucks before
starting and found a lot of very helpful posts (Ian, if you're ever in
Dallas, i owe you a beer). The Haynes manual does a very incomplete
job of listing out all the steps. It only has 8 steps for "intake
manifold removal"! i guess they can do it in 8 steps since step 5 is
basically "disconnect everything from the intake manifold".
a friend gave me the brilliant idea of keeping track of everything
that is being taken off. then you only have to go in reverse through
the list to put everything back together. in order to try and give
something back to the community, so to speak, here is the list that i
kept. this gives a much better view of what needs to be done than
what is listed in the Haynes manual. actually, if i had seen this
list before starting, i might not have started at all :) i hope i'm
not scaring anyone. this is simply a list i kept to guide me, and i'm
not the most experienced mechanic, so the names of things might be
wrong. please don't simply go by this list when doing this. get more
posts written by better mechanics than me, and get a manual.
here it goes, in order of things that need to be removed....
1. air filter housing
2. vortec cover
3. belt
4. a/c compressor (unbolt it and swing it across to other side, hoses
intact)
5. radiator hoses
6. thermostat clips
7. throttle cables
8. throttle cable clips
9. coil clips
9. fan
10. air line opposite fuel lines
11. fuel injector wiring
12. passenger's side spark plug wires including C plug
13. thing on intake manifold connected to evaporative canister (see
EECS in manual)
14. knock sensor mount clip
15. main harness bracket on driver side
16. exhaust manifold hose
17. power steering pulley
18. pulley bracket
19. coil
20. distributor cap (mark the rotor to distributor base and
distributor base to engine. or, even better, see Ian's previous
posts)
21. distributor bolt and bracket
22. distributor
23. driver's side spark plug wires
24. disconnect one side of fuel filter (to relieve pressure on fuel
lines)
25. fuel lines
26. heater hose
27. alternator bracket
28. water pump hose
29. hose from water pump to thermostat
30. bracket on passenger's side going to coil and thing from step 13
(one post earlier said to bend this part of the bracket that hangs
over the intake manifold, but i found it easier to remove it)
31. intake manifold bolts
32. passenger's side valve cover (called rocker arm cover in manual)
33. finally, lift intake manifold

Man, I am glad now I hired this one done. Even the dealer screwed
mine up and had to do it again for free. He broke some little pot
metal anti-freeze pipe the second time that they warned me they might
break when they did it the first time. Their expense this time. The
bill was about $450 right before Christmas. Merry Christmas to me.
"Hey come out in the garage and let me show you my new intake gasket!"

so many different chevy's have that same pipe connection to the intake
manifold and once they are frozen in and leaking you are just soooo
f**ked
Almost impossible to get the threads out once the damn thing breaks off
w/o pulling the intake

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